An icon in ministry for nearly 40 years will be coming to an end. Operation Mobilization is being forced to make a difficult decision to decommission the Doulos ship after nearly 40 years of ministry around the world.

Doulos is the world’s oldest ocean-going passenger ship, now 95 years old, and faces some very costly repairs. The ship is currently in Singapore for its annual period of dry dock and surveys.

Inspections indicate the ship is no longer sea worthy and is in need of costly repairs. In spite of the year-round maintenance that has taken place, the amount of steel replacement and other repairs needed for her to continue sailing are overwhelming.

Early indications are that the work would cost over $14 million and take five months to complete. The OM Ships executive leadership team and board believes that is not appropriate to invest resources of this scale into the ship, since Doulos would have a limited ministry future.

“We are committed to operating safe ships and complying with the requirements of our classification society, RINA, as well as the International Safety Management requirements for ships,” affirms Peter Nicoll. “We have been praying that God would use this five-year ‘special survey’ to give us a clear picture of the way forward for Doulos, and He has done that.”

Hicks says there’s still a big question about what will happen to the Doulos workers. “We have 300 people who serve on the Doulos. We will now need to do something with them. And we need to find out if they want to come back to the home country and serve, or if they want to go to one of our other countries and serve.”

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